Keir Starmer: ‘What we’ve criticised the government for is simply sweeping options off the table before they even started the negotiations.’
Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Labour would like the possibility of a form of membership of the single market to be one of the starting points of negotiations to leave the EU, the party’s shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, has said.

While he conceded this would be difficult to achieve while also imposing restrictions on the free movement of people, Starmer criticised the government for pre-emptively ruling out single market membership – even though this is what his own leader has done.

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Asked on Sunday whether he was clear that Brexit would mean an end to single market membership, Jeremy Corbyn told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: “Absolutely.”

Speaking later on ITV’s Peston on Sunday, John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said of single market membership: “I can’t see it even being on the table in the negotiations, I don’t think it’s feasible.”

But asked about this on Monday, Starmer told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One he would like to see a “different tone and approach” to talks with the EU, including not pre-emptively ruling out continued single market membership.

“What we’ve criticised the government for is simply sweeping options off the table before they even started the negotiations,” he said. “What David Davis said this morning is that it’s not that the government doesn’t want membership of the single market, it’s that they’ve been told that you can’t have that with freedom of movement.

“It seems to me that would be a good place to start discussions, start negotiations, rather than simply taking it off the table.”

A Labour source said Starmer’s position was no different from that of Corbyn and McDonnell, who were also only ruling out the idea of staying in the single market as it currently exists.

“Our policy is the same as it was in the manifesto, and hasn’t changed,” the source said.

Starmer’s comments, following a similar approach taken by the shadow trade secretary, Barry Gardiner, illustrate the continued tensions within Labour as it seeks to differentiate its stance from the Conservatives, without alienating Brexit-supporting voters.

Asked whether he was seeking an unrealistic “cake and eat it” approach, Starmer said he was “not pretending that’s going to be easy”.

Starmer said: “These are difficult things to negotiate. Sometimes I think that in the campaign we got far too down in the weeds of the difference between access, full access and membership. Let’s focus on what the real outcomes are.”

He added: “It can be done. I’m confident it can be done. We need to send a message to our EU partners that we want collaboration, we want cooperation, and we’re going to do this in a grown-up, mature way.”

While full freedom of movement would need to go, it could potentially be maintained for families or those with jobs, Starmer suggested. He said: “We could think differently. But we’ve got to get around the table and have that discussion.

“What the government’s said is: it’s simply too hard, sweep all the options off the table. In so doing it has created this extreme form of Brexit, which has now been rejected by the electorate.”

Speaking earlier, Gardiner took a similar tone. Asked about the single market, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “What we’ve said is that we need those benefits, and whether they’re achieved through reformed membership of the single market and the customs union, or through a new, bespoke trading arrangement, is actually secondary to achieving the benefits.

“It’s an open question as to what we can get. What we criticised [Theresa May] for doing is taking membership of the single market off the table right from the beginning.

“It’s quite ironic that she was the one who said you had to take certain things off the table, and she said we should not take off the table a no-deal outcome, which seemed crazy to most people.”

Asked about the seeming difference between his view and that of Corbyn and McDonnell, Gardiner told BBC2’s Daily Politics that he thought continued membership of the single market was “highly unlikely” but could not be discounted.

“We’ve been absolutely clear on this – we want those benefits. Actually, the issue of how we get there is secondary,” he said.

However, Gardiner continued, the only way to keep membership while delivering a Brexit palatable to voters would be if the EU allowed it to happen without adhering to the free movement of people, one of the four freedoms along with goods, services and capital.

Of such a deal, Gardiner said: “The government has ruled that out. We’ve said it’s highly unlikely, for all the reasons that we’ve just talked about in terms of the four freedoms.

“The EU have made it absolutely clear that they will not give membership of the internal market unless it is accompanied by the four freedoms. But what we’re saying is, if they want to offer that, would we turn it down?”